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Man, I really wanted to like this manga more than I do. I've been reading quite a few short manga lately, many of which have been really good, such as the following: Yumi and Kurumi, an intensely heartwarming and wholesome manga about a sentient doll wanting to make a put upon woman happy; Yume no Hashibashi, a melancholic LGBT story that treats its characters with kindness even with its potentially problematic premise; Summer Ghost, a wonderful adaptation of the short movie that adds a lot more information than the movie could include; Kagome Kagome, a beautifully colored period piece about a nun yearning for a ... life beyond her convent; The Knight Blooms Behind Castle Walls, a story about a girl's dream of achieving knighthood that is incredibly well researched and full of solid world-building, and The Bones of an Invisible Human, a down-to-earth drama about a girl dealing with having murdered her abusive father and the fallout from it. But I admittedly found one that turned out to be a dud, Ms. Itsuya, which is a shame because I like its premise and it really could have been something good, but its overall execution was all over the place, leaving it feeling like an incoherent mess.

The story centers on a boy named Toki Sakamoto, whose life has been rough. He left his parents due to not fitting in with his stepfather's family, and has been living with his grandmother. But his grandmother is dealing with dementia, and he wants to take up a job to support her, but his school wants him to pursue his education rather than give it up. To ease the burden on him, his school arranges for him to live with the quirky substitute art teacher, the titular Itsuya Tsuruta and her ward, a girl named Kon. Yes, her first name is actually Kon, not her surname. Why this is, I have no clue. Itsuya is flighty and is not very good at drawing, but she seems to have the power to make her drawings come to life, using it to help those who cross her path, Toki included. Toki isn't sure what to make of her, and Kon's bad attitude doesn't make things easy for him either, but slowly, Toki becomes accustomed to his new situation.

You'd think a premise like this would lead to something heartwarming, and sure enough, Ms. Itsuya TRIES to be that. But honestly, its whole handling of its premise leaves a lot to be desired. For one, a majority of the characters are always shown bickering and being unnecessarily mean to each other with very little provocation. Seriously, Toki and Kon's interactions consist of the two of them being literally NOTHING but extremely rude and insensitive towards one another, even when it isn't warranted. Any time the two of them do try to help each other out, it's always undercut by some snarky comments they make leading to yet another needless argument. As a result, any scenes where they actually manage to have a civil conversation and whatever "heartwarming" scenes they get wind up feeling really hollow and unearned. The fact that the two of them marry at the end of the manga is especially baffling because every interaction they've had consists of them bickering and arguing, and I honestly cannot see why these two would ever get in any kind of romantic relationship whatsoever. I have no problem with characters having huge flaws, and Toki and Kon having character flaws isn't the issue here. I would have appreciated it if the mangaka had Toki and Kon not get along at first, but then gradually get to know one another and have them slowly come to respect one another. But that doesn't happen, and any time it does, the two of them immediately go back to arguing and making out of nowhere, insensitive comments to one another. Why is this manga trying to convince me that these two are made for each other when its attempts at doing so clearly state otherwise?

The other one-off characters aren't much better, as they're just as unnecessarily mean-spirited as Toki and Kon are, yet the manga wants you to believe that they're actually good people on the inside. For example, there's one early chapter where Toki's school tries to get him to live with his gym teacher Oniguma, and the manga really wants to convince you that this gym teacher is a good guy who cares about his son. But the first scene this gym teacher shares with his son is him flat-out slapping the kid, yelling at him for coming back to town after leaving his job, and calling him a weakling for not wanting to stay in the city, not even bothering to hear out why his son quit his job in the first place. Eventually, Oniguma and his son "supposedly" reconcile. I say supposedly because this reconciliation consists of Oniguma begging his son to come back not because he's sorry for what he did and not bothering to understand him...but because he's terrified of cockroaches and can't be bothered to kill them himself. The manga tries to make this seem super heartwarming, but all it does is make the dad come off as a massive jackass who only uses his son for his own convenience and hasn't learned a thing from his mistakes, so their so-called reconciliation falls completely flat and it makes it really hard to sympathize with this guy in any way. There's another chapter where Toki saves a kid from bullies, but not only is the kid an ungrateful brat about it, he even insults him right to his face by judging him for watching a children's cartoon. Ms. Itsuya, if you're trying to make me feel sympathy for these characters, don't make them into jackasses who are needlessly cruel to Toki or everyone else for no reason. Kon is especially egregious because all throughout her time in the manga, she's hotheaded, quick to anger, and extremely judgmental, using Toki for whatever the hell she wants without even asking him, is constantly on his case about stuff that doesn't need to be made into a big deal, and criticizes both him and Itsuya for liking a children's show. Oh, and the second volume throws in a character who, I'm not kidding you, pulls up Kon's skirt, loudly announces what color her undies are to everyone, and he gets barely any comeuppance whatsoever, and everyone just...forgets about it later. The hell?!

Do you see the problem with Ms. Itsuya yet? I want to like this manga and its premise, but it has an utterly unbearable cast of characters who seem to go out of their way to be as obnoxiously abrasive and jerkish as humanly possible, and its attempts at making the audience sympathize with them or make them grow nicer fall completely flat because of this, and it constantly undermines itself each time. The only character who escapes this is Itsuya herself, and even then, she has the problem of coming across as a bit too perfect, rarely showing any real character flaws of her own. She mostly exists just to be some guiding force to the kids rather than a character in her own right. The only real positives I can say about Ms. Itsuya as a manga are, 1. The art is alright, and 2. I actually liked the ending twist and the revelation it revealed about Itsuya's whole reason for magically creating art.

It sucks that I couldn't enjoy this manga, and believe me, I really want to! If you love Ms. Itsuya, good for you. It just didn't appeal to me personally. Luckily, the mangaka Mizu Sahara (real name Sumomo Yumeka) has made plenty of other manga, including an adaptation of Makoto Shinkai's Voices of a Distant Star that I read a long while ago. I should probably re-read that. But yeah, give Ms. Itsuya a read if you're into short manga that don't overstay their welcome, but if you can't tolerate the obnoxious characters, give it a miss.

The thing I love about anime and manga is that you never know what you'll find. I came across this manga, Yume no Hashibashi, on AniList because it was on the recommendations listing for another manga I was looking up. I got curious and wound up reading it in one sitting because it was short. The story centers on Kiyoko Itou, an old woman who is dealing with dementia and can barely recognize her own family members anymore, as is typical for any old woman in the twilight years of her life. One day, a woman named Mitsu Sonoda visits her, whom Kiyoko remembers perfectly ... even after all these years. Sadly, not a day after her visit, Mitsu dies from getting hit by car. Kiyoko looks back on her life, how she came to know and love Mitsu, and how their lives diverged and changed in the coming decades. Yeah, I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, this is an LGBT story about two women who fell in love but couldn't be their authentic selves because of the eras they grew up in and were made to live their lives separate from one another. This is your pretty typical tragic LGBT story setup, which goes as far back as the 19th century, though back then it was due to executive mandates that forbade LGBT couples from having happy endings or being portrayed as anything but either evil, sick, or cured of their homosexuality. Yume no Hashibashi was first written in 2018, and thankfully, it doesn't have that level of subtly homophobic tragedy.

Rather, Yume no Hashibashi explores the lives these two women led in the aftermath of their first passions and how they came to be where they are, even as their time comes to an end. Interestingly enough, Yume no Hashibashi chooses not to relay the events of their pasts in chronological order. You know how in some stories, some begin with a scene of an older MC telling someone about their past, then focusing entirely on their younger selves until the very end? Yume no Hashibashi does things differently, actually starting from when Kiyoko and Mitsu are in their eighties, then going backwards: Showing them as older adults, then young adults, with the penultimate chapter showing them as high school kids right before the actual ending. I think this was a good move on the author's part, because the characters constantly talk about certain events from their past and how those events shaped who they are today, and some aspects are deliberately kept a mystery up until the end, rather than being revealed early on. I don't think I've seen many series do this, and doing it to preserve the mystery of just why Kiyoko and Mitsu did what they did until the end is actually a pretty smart move. It keeps the reader invested even as we see other events in their lives change things, like Kiyoko and Mitsu being pressured into marrying husbands or job hunting in the post-war period.

Kiyoko and Mitsu themselves are also very compelling characters who manage to carry the story wonderfully. The two of them are unique, interesting individuals with their own strengths, weaknesses, desires, and views on how they deal with the changes in their lives, both from not being able to be together as they want to how they change and grow as the decades pass. Yume no Hashibashi as a manga does a great job in gradually revealing just how these two women came to be where they are, why they made the decisions that they did, and how those decisions and mistakes affected them throughout their lives. Since the manga itself is pretty down-to-earth and realistic, nothing is dramatized or sensationalized, managing to avoid any needless melodrama. I do kind of wish we got to know some of the side characters a bit more, such as Mitsu's friend Masumi and Kiyoko's children and grandchildren, and they just felt like they were just there to advance the plot and talk to the main leads than really be fleshed out characters on their own merits. It's a shame we don't get to see more of them, but I did like what we did get, and they were still miles away from your usual anime stereotypes. The simple artwork helps in this regard as well. The backgrounds are all well drawn with no clutter, the usage of shadows, lighting, and gray space is well balanced, the character designs are distinct and down-to-earth, and I love how both Kiyoko and Mitsu are shown visibly changing and aging over the years with every chapter.

Considering the manga's overall premise, I'm sure LGBT people growing up in the modern era will take issue with the fact that Kiyoko and Mitsu's relationship ends tragically in and of itself, and I can understand why. For years, LGBT people from all walks of life were demonized, marginalized, and treated like crap just for existing, with offensive, unflattering portrayals in the media not always helping matters, especially the mandates that were forced on said depictions to begin with because of the outdated laws that were put in practice. The only scraps they could get were the stuff I mentioned above: Stories were LGBT people were only portrayed as either evil, met tragic ends, or were magically cured. For example, Americans born in the nineties may remember the movie Philadelphia, and he producers for that wanted to include explicitly intimate scenes between the characters Andrew and Miguel, but execs forced them to cut them out because prejudice against LGBT people and anyone who had AIDS was still prevalent, though that movie would be praised for being one of the first mainstream movies to normalize LGBT people. Now, in 2023, we have an abundance of all sorts of LGBT stories, from fluffy and lighthearted, to dark and angsty, to adventurous and blood-pumping, even with overzealous puritanical soccer moms complaining that the world is "pushing the gay agenda on their kids" or stupid shit like that. There's more variety, and many LGBT fans young and old are happy that they can tell their own stories, real or fiction, without fear of censorship. But this begs the question: With Yume no Hashibashi's overall nature as a story, does that make it homophobic? I don't know where I stand in terms of orientation, as I've never been in a relationship, so I'm probably not the best person to comment on this, but based on what I've read of both the manga and studies on how LGBT people were portrayed in various media across the years, I'm of the opinion that the answer is no in this case.

There's nothing in the manga that states that homosexuality is inherently bad, any homophobia Kiyoko and Mitsu do face is extremely subtle and more due to Japanese views on how women should be made to live their lives than anything, a product of the times they grew up in. Plus, Mitsu and Kiyoko do manage to live long, full lives even if they don't get to be together, and they even ask themselves if things might have been different had they been born today, with Japan now steadily becoming more accepting of LGBT people (Though not without its own problems when it comes to the journey towards getting there, as current events can tell you). I found an interesting Twitter thread (Here: https://twitter.com/SamAburime/status/1606492040904196098) last year detailing the differences between queer tragedies and stories about LGBT people being made by bigoted government/religious heads mandating that "sexual deviants" be killed off as a way of drilling into the audience that it's bad and wrong to deviate from society's values, and how some people decry queer tragedies as bad representation without taking into account the time period and contexts in which they were made. Yume no Hashibashi isn't on the level of, say, The Beautiful Skies of Houou High, where not only do all the other characters demonize the MC for her lesbianism, to the point where the MC's mother abuses her for it, but it's very much implied that the author for that series wants the readers to take the mother's side and agree with her. Gee, remember that shitshow? I don't know what Yumi Sudou's views on LGBT people are, but Yume no Hashibashi treats Kiyoko and Mitsu with empathy and sensitivity, never demonizing them for their relationship, just portraying them as people who made their fair share of rash decisions and showing how they live their lives. Yes, their relationship doesn't turn out the way they wanted, and they both die in the end, but the lives they lived were good, happy ones, and they still treasure the bond they share even if they went down different paths. So yes, while Yume no Hashibashi is in some ways a queer tragedy, it treats its characters with empathy and kindness, and doesn't make their being queer out to be an inherently bad thing.

So yes, while some aspects of Yume no Hashibashi may not appeal to modern readers, especially LGBT readers who are sick of tragedies no matter how they were made, I'm of the opinion that it's a sweet, understated drama that cares about its characters and deserves more love than it gets. It's not going to bring the house down, but I don't think it should be dismissed just because it happens to be a tragedy involving LGBT people.

Man, I really should be more excited for Tokyo Mew Mew New than I turned out to be. The first half of it definitely wasn't bad, but it was still a far cry from being as good as the 2002 anime. Granted, the manga isn't exactly a masterpiece by any stretch, and I've explained as such in my own review for it, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. TMM New, to its credit, did try to differentiate itself from both the old anime and the manga with the changes that it made, some of which continued in this second half. But now ... that I've completed this half of TMM New, I don't think it succeeded in carving out its own identity. Since this part takes place immediately after the first half of TMM New, I'm not gonna bore you with another summary of the series, as you can look to my review for the first half.

I've mentioned that TMM New's animation, while a valiant attempt to give the series a new coat of paint, wasn't as dynamic and sharp as the 2002 anime was, but it still did its job. Unfortunately, I think the animation really started to fall apart in this second part. There were no small amount of off model shots, stiff action scenes, and still shots bogging it down, making almost every scene feel sluggish and slow when it shouldn't be that way. The fight scenes are especially affected by this, as a lot of them consist of cost-cutting static shots that are meant to give the implication of movement while showing as little movement as humanly possible. I'm not going to say the 2002 anime's animation was a visual feast for the eyes or anything, as that had its own issues, especially when it first aired on TV, but the action scenes there at least had more dynamic movement and the fights actually felt palpable, and the producers at least tried to make do with what they had. Part 2's animation even loses the refinement that even the first half had, and I can count on both hands the scenes I saw where the girls' faces just looked really off, or one of their body parts, such as their eyes, looked smaller or bigger than the other.

Part 2 also carries over some flaws that Part 1 had, particularly not doing enough to flesh out the rest of the characters aside from Ichigo. It tries, it really tries, but the things they add to characters such as Mint and Lettuce don't really do enough to make them feel more three-dimensional or interesting. With the smaller episode count on both ends, this was inevitable, so I can't really fault the producers for trying to make do with what they had at least. But even some of the changes they did make seemed really odd. In one episode, Mint runs away from home and stays at Ichigo's place for a while, and has absolutely no clue what a middle-class house looks like, nor does she understand the concept of families sharing one bathroom. For as much as the series tried to make Mint smarter and more intelligent than she was in other adaptations, it feels jarring to see her act really dumb for what is ostensibly no reason and her behavior there goes against a lot of her established characterization. Say what you will about the 2002 anime, at least in that one, Mint's personality and behavior was consistent, and she wasn't suddenly retconned into not knowing certain really basic things! Bascially, all the characters, heroes and villains, don't change much and despite attempts to flesh them out, still come off as pretty bland and milque toast.

I won't mention the soundtrack a second time, as it's pretty much the same as Part 1, still pretty good but nothing groundbreaking. To TMM New's credit, there are some things Part 2 did that I did genuinely like. Remember Mint's brother Seiji in the 2002 anime? There, he was just a filler character and only appeared in one episode, but TMM New decided to not only have him appear more, but even have him be more active in the story's main conflict. I'm honestly surprised they decided to use him that way, and I'm glad they actually bothered to give him something resembling a character arc and plot relevance. Secondly, one thing I wish both the manga and 2002 anime had done was elaborate more on the aliens' lore. To my surprise, TMM New actually does just that, not only actually showing other aliens besides Kish, Pie, and Tart, but expanding on why they had to leave Earth and having one of the characters learn more about them. It even shows what happens to them after Ichigo and friends save the Earth from disaster, which I don't think the manga or 2002 anime ever did, which is nice. I also appreciate that TMM New actually bothered to show a bit of Zakuro's background by giving her a friend who shoots all of her videos. They still don't do anything like show what her family life is like, or if she even has one, but it's way more than the 2002 anime ever bothered to do with Zakuro. Plus, while the Mew Mews voice actors aside from Ichigo and Lettuce are still kind of green, Mint's actress really seems to have settled into her role, and her voice doesn't sound as awkward as it did in Part 1.

However, if I'm going to be honest here, I'm gonna say I still prefer the 2002 anime over both the manga and Tokyo Mew Mew New. For all the things TMM New tried to do, it's unable to break out of the source material's shadow, or even the shadow of the 2002 anime. It's a fine adaptation for what it is, but not every change it made benefited it, and in the end, it doesn't go beyond just average. But hey, Tokyo Mew Mew coming back into the limelight at all is still a miracle in and of itself, and is a fitting tribute to the late Mia Ikumi's memory. It's not going to bring the house down, but it's still a nice kids show to introduce your little sister, daughter, or niece to anime with, if you want a shorter alternative to the 2002 anime.

(This review covers seasons one and two)

Gundam has never been high on my priority list when it comes to anime. To date, I've only seen Gundam X, War In The Pocket, and both seasons of 00 (Excluding the movie), though as of today, I'm adding Gundam: The Witch From Mercury to this list. The reason I haven't watched many Gundam shows is that...well, I have a hard time keeping up with and comprehending hard sci-fi stuff and the technobabble they try to throw at you. Because of this, I originally had no interest in G-Witch at all, even when it was first announced. But then ... I heard my online circles talking about it and praising it up the wazoo...and hearing the news that it apparently became so popular that accompanying merchandise outsold pretty much every other Gundam property EVER. The first episode made a gigantic splash across the world, bringing in a huge influx of new fans. Learning that G-Witch also took place in a school and would tone down the technobabble is what convinced me to finally sit down and watch it, and I'm glad to say I don't regret it. But while I do genuinely enjoy G-Witch as a show, there are things it could have improved upon.

In the year Ad Stella 122, a young girl by the name of Suletta Mercury transfers from her home planet of...well, Mercury, to the prestigious Asticassia School of Technology, a planetary academic institute run by the megacorporation known as the Benerit Group. While on her way there, she encounters another girl, Miorine Rembran, trying to escape the institute and head to Earth in order to free herself from her controlling father and his plans for her. Asticassia is known for letting students engage in staged mecha duels to decide on everything, no matter how petty, from apologies to marriage arrangements, and duelists all over constantly battle each other for the right to marry Miorine for their own gains. Miorine really wants to take her life in her own hands and is sick of being treated like little more than a prize to be won. Through a series of events, Suletta winds up winning a duel against a bully, which results in her being set to be Miorine's...betrothed? But this is just the beginning of Suletta and Miorine's complicated life together at the academy, and only one piece of a much larger agenda tying into the origins of Suletta's beloved mobile suit, the Gundam Aerial.

Compared to the few Gundam series' I've seen, G-Witch's overall look leans more on the overtly cartoony side of animation rather than the more rugged, rustic, realistic designs from series' past, even compared to the very first Gundam anime. The female characters look more cutesy and moe, most of the guys are pretty boys with multi-colored hair, and some of the adult characters have designs that border on being kind of ridiculous, namely that quintet of old ladies who run Peil Technologies. Other than some off-model moments scattered throughout the show, the animation is fairly consistent throughout. The backgrounds are all well-made, and the series has no small amount of fluid giant robot action, especially near the end of the series. Plus, the actual mobile suit designs, even the ones for each company in-series, are all visually distinct, helped by the fact that Sunrise hired four mechanical designers to design them for each in-series corporation, all of whom worked on previous Gundam series before G-Witch. Though...I have to admit, I like the general soundtrack, but I admit I wasn't a fan of the openings and endings save for the second opening. Seriously, the singer's voice for the second ending makes my ears bleed.

The overall storyline tends to be all over the place, though in the beginning, this isn't a bad thing. At first, G-Witch seemed to be going the really cheesy route of "Kids good, adults bad!" "Down with the patriarchy!" message, what with having several of their villains be abusive parents shouting stuff like "Children should obey their parents without question!" without a hint of subtlety, though thankfully that got toned down as the series went on. I know some people had issues with the slow pacing of the earliest episodes, but I personally didn't, as I felt they did a fair enough job of not only easing us into the setting, but fleshing out the cast of characters, especially Suletta and Miorine. I hate this idea that a show has to be nothing but non-stop action and story progression, because if all you do is go fast, fast, fast, without taking the time to develop your characters and show what they're like outside the main conflict, how can we, the audience, be expected to care about them? And as far as the characters go, the main trio—Suletta, Miorine, and Guel—carry the show wonderfully. Not every character gets the screen time needed to really flesh them and their backgrounds out beyond the main conflict (Shaddiq's cohorts are especially hit hard with this, as we literally know nothing about them besides that they work for him), but the ones that do fulfill their roles in the story pretty well. In my opinion, Guel is the best developed character in the whole series, and G-Witch did an amazing job at showing his growth from entitled, arrogant jackass to a more humbler, calmer, and more intelligent man.

But as much as I hate to say it, as you can tell by the rating I gave it, G-Witch isn't without its issues, all of which culminate in one thing: G-Witch feels like it should have received way more episodes than it wound up getting. Previously, Gundam series used to be able to receive 40-50 something episodes, even if circumstances mandated that they be cut short. The very first Mobile Suit Gundam series was planned to have 52 episodes but was cut down to 43 due to low ratings upon its initial airing. Gundam X was planned to have 49 episodes but was cut down to 39, though it was able to finish its story on its own terms, so it wasn't outright cancelled. G-Witch is the first mainline Gundam series that I know of to have only been given 24 episodes, barring the Prologue episode (Do correct me if I'm wrong)...and I think this episode length wound up working against it. The last half of part two really bum rushes through its story at a rapid pace, introducing new concepts, characters, and conflicts out of nowhere with absolutely no foreshadowing or explanation whatsoever, discarding other subplots wholesale, and writing themselves in a corner to the point where they pull random Deus Ex Machinas out of their ass just to be able to resolve everything. Even the finale is loaded to the brim with random resolutions to the entire conflict that have absolutely ZERO explanation for how they happen, especially in regards to one character, and only raise more questions than they answer. You'd think G-Witch's popularity would have allowed Sunrise to give it more episodes so it could actually flesh all these things out rather than cram them all into a quarter of the series. Plus, as a result of this, several important plot points just seem to get thrown to the wayside. Like, the series and the characters in it seems to flat-out forget that Guel's father was a complete jackass who berated his son over every little thing, but when the guy dies, everyone talks about his death like it was the worst thing ever when the guy did nothing to deserve any lick of sympathy from anyone. There are even points where G-Witch flat-out contradicts or retcons previous plot threads it established, even as far as one of the prologue novels.

So yeah, as far as G-Witch's flaws go, all of them are the result of not having more episodes to work with. But with all that said, I still enjoyed G-Witch as a show. Granted, I do like Gundam X and War In The Pocket a little more, but that's not to say G-Witch doesn't have anything of value to offer. The fact that it managed to rekindle Gundam's overall popularity, especially overseas, proved that the franchise is here to stay, and to me, reigniting new life into a franchise is the best thing that Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury can do.

Man, when did Korean webcomics start getting popular? Enough so that they actually get animated? I have no clue. I have to admit, my first exposure to the long strip Korean webcomics, or webtoons as they're called, was when I first heard about one called The Monster Duchess and the Contract Princess (Officially localized by Tapas as The Monstrous Duke's Adopted Daughter), and first reading it, I had a really hard time adjusting to the fact that every chapter was just super long strips with a LOT of space in between panels. But I liked the series enough that I read more of it, though ... I stopped because MangaDex got hacked and I couldn't read more of it. But since then, I've started dipping my toes in more of them and learning more. One such webtoon, Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Duke's Mansion, is one of many that got adapted into an anime this past year. It pretty much follows the premise of a lot of reincarnation isekai shows such as My Next Life as a Villainess and Mushoku Tensei with a more openly shoujo bent. I'm not really sure why I decided to watch this one, as I didn't have any interest in doing so previously. I was probably bored or something. But having actually watched the anime now, maybe I was right to initially avoid Raeliana, because...to be blunt, for as much as this show claims to be more interesting than it is, it's actually flat-out boring. And if the anime is this bland, I can only pray the webcomic its based on is better.

So what's the story? College student Rinko Hanasaki (Original Korean name Eunha Park, for some reason Japan changed her nationality) is down on her luck, but just as she finds she got accepted into a college she applied to, she's pushed off a building by a mysterious assailant, which leads to her death. But she finds herself reincarnated in the body of a character from a novel she once read. Things get complicated when she realizes just who she's been reincarnated as: Raeliana MacMillan, the daughter of a nouveau riche baron whose untimely death by the hands of her fiance triggers the plot of said novel. Determined not to face death a second time, she tries everything she can to break up with said fiance, but all attempts fail. Remembering one particular plotline in the novel, Raeliana decides to blackmail one Duke Noah Wynknight into a contractual marriage so she can finally save herself. Threatened by Raeliana's knowledge, Noah plays along and gets engaged to her.

Seriously, reading the premise for this, I really should like this more than I do. A female MC who takes action to prevent her demise within the constraints of a fairly well-developed fantasy setting? I should be all over this! Especially since Raeliana isn't the passive, swooning girl who just accepts her fate like her contemporaries tend to do...but I'm not, and there's so many things about Raeliana as a show that just don't work. One of the biggest things is the animation, which really doesn't do the story justice. Raeliana is one of those shows where the still shots look good, but whenever something has to move, it looks either janky or weird, or extremely limited and stiff, usually the latter. The backgrounds are fine, but for some reason, the faces of people in the background are grayed out, the show seems to go out of its way to avoid animating anything resembling movement such as sword fighting, and there are several instances where horses and carriages are animated in really bad CGI that make no effort to blend seamlessly with the 2D animation whatsoever, and in general are really jarring and out of place. Plus, the characters' facial expressions have no variety to them, ranging from either deadpan or dull surprise. Seriously, the company hired to animate this were not the best people on the job. A story like this should have been done by either Wit Studio or Kyoto Animation. If done by the latter, it probably would have looked as good as Violet Evergarden. I didn't find the soundtrack to be very memorable either. I couldn't tell you the first thing about it.

Sadly, the characters are where Raeliana really suffers as a show. I found Noah in particular to be very irritating because other than being handsome and unnecessarily smarmy, he's about as memorable as styrofoam. Most of his scenes consist of looking stoic, or irritating Raeliana with his constant vague, lifeless dialogue that either confuses her because he can't be bothered to explain things clearly or makes her blush, that's it. He has nothing in the way of depth or personality to him other than being a manipulative douche who riles up Raeliana when she calls him out on not communicating properly. He almost feels like a teenage girl's idea of what an ideal love interest should be like than an actual person with strengths, weaknesses, depth, and so on. Half the time I wanted to punch him in the face because of his insufferable smarminess. Plus, the story claims that all the girls want to marry him, but I can't fathom what they even see in Noah to even want anything to do with him. Seriously, I'm playing a visual novel called Jack Jeanne right now that has much better, more romantic, more three-dimensional, and more developed love interests than Noah could ever hope to be. I don't know what he's like in the manhwa, so for all I know he might be better there, but I don't know when I'll get around to reading it. None of the other side characters do anything for me either, other than Ansley. I actually liked her and wish she could have done more. The villains are all so stereotypically evil that they might as well have come out of Saturday morning cartoons, with Vivian being the most obvious one with her creepy obsession with Noah and wanting to ruin Raeliana's life because how dare she even so much as talk to the guy she has a crush on.

It especially sucks that I can't like Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Duke's Mansion because Raeliana as a character is perfectly fine! I would have been all over her if the animators and story really bothered to do her justice, but even here, they royally screw up. Again, I haven't read the manhwa so I can't comment on how she is there as opposed to the adaptation, but there are several things about Raeliana that I do like. She's proactive, she's smart, she wants to take charge of her own destiny, she's nice to the people she cares about and treats the servants like people, and she doesn't fall for any of Vivian and her posse's petty middle school clique antics...she's everything I wish Elianna from Bibliophile Princess should have been! But a lot of Raeliana's inner monologues feel like they're trying to create the illusion that she's smart rather than actually bothering to have her show why she's smart. Plus, since this is a reincarnation isekai, I wish we could have had some insight on who Rinko was as a person before she got reincarnated as Raeliana, but we know absolutely nothing about Rinko, what she was like, what her hobbies were, and so on, which makes me question why this story even has to be a reincarnation isekai to begin with. They could do away with the whole reincarnation thing and nothing would be lost because they don't really bother to do anything with it here.

Even the premise, which really could have been good, suffers from not making much sense. A lot of the politics in this show consist of people being catty to one another, and the mysteries of who's doing what can be easily figured out by anyone over the age of 12 because the culprits may as well have flashing neon lights over their heads. Furthermore, because Raeliana is 12 episodes long, it doesn't cover the whole manhwa, ending on a pretty open ending that's pretty blatant with its "Read the manhwa!" message with nothing it established being resolved in any way. This whole anime feels so stiff and workman-like, it's in dire need of some flair and life to make it more interesting than it is. There's a good premise and good characters in here just begging to break out of this stiff shell that the anime is in. In the end, Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Duke's Mansion is an anime that really could have been good or even great, but was animated by people who were too immature and inexperienced to really do it justice, and they were the wrong people to put on this project. Granted, I'd still watch this over Bibliophile Princess any day, and it helps that Yen Press is putting out the manhwa under its label Ize Press, so anyone who lives in the US will eventually be able to read Raeliana's saga in full.

The IdolM@ster series needs no introduction...if you live in Japan. Basically, for the uninitiated, it's a series of video games where you raise and train idols to become famous. It's now a multimedia franchise that continues to rake in money to this very day. If you want for information on the franchise as a whole, I recommend the Project Im@s wiki, as it pretty much has everything you could ever need, from game info to translations of all the songs and their lyrics. I haven't seen any of the anime that were made for it...except for this one, The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls U149, which was ... touted to be focusing only on the youngest members of the franchise. Mainly because two other Idolmaster anime that are coming out later are going to be made in all CGI for some reason, and I have no interest in the other two that came before, the original 2011 anime and Cinderella Girls. I'm not really sure why I decided to put myself through watching U149, which is what I'll be calling this iteration, but I kinda regret doing so. There's really no denying it, U149 is just another corporate vehicle to bring in more money for a multimedia franchise.

The story itself is pretty barebones. A young producer is put in charge of the Third Entertainment Division, where he tries to help a bunch of elementary school girls debut as idols, mainly because nobody else wants to deal with them. The producer, who goes completely unnamed, as is the case for other Idolmaster properties, does what he can to help them, get to know them, and bring out their strengths and talents. If you're expecting this to be a Toddlers & Tiaras or Honey Boo Boo style show, don't worry, it doesn't stoop that low...though even in its present state, U149 doesn't really go beyond being just another generic and mediocre idol anime with cheesy, saccharine songs about making your dreams come true and twinkling and so on. A lot of its episodes are just barebones "idol girl of the week" that try to flesh out the characters to varying degrees of success. I don't know how the previous Idolmaster anime did it, but the creators' attempts at writing characters here quite plainly suck.

Seriously, I found myself much more annoyed with the idol girls than endeared, and not just because of their shrill, ear-bleeding voices screeching every single line in the most overacted ways possible. Hi again, Misaki Kuno and your nails on a chalkboard chipmunk voice. Though ironically, Kuno's character isn't even the worst one in this show. The kids constantly complain about the producer treating them like kids, with Arisu and Risa being the biggest offenders, but they continually act like selfish brats, so what right do they have to demand to be waited on hand and foot? The writers for this anime cannot write kids, because they either act too mature for their age or way too childish to the point where they behave more like toddlers than school-aged kids. The worst offenders of this are Risa and Koharu, with Risa in particular being absolutely repugnant in that not only does she threaten to accuse the producer of being a pedo at one point for an extremely petty reason, the creators decided to make her have a really, really creepy obsession with her father. And by that I mean Yuri Briar levels of obsession. Like, Risa flat-out says that she wants to become Prime Minister for the sole reason of changing the laws so kids can marry their fathers, which is what she wants to do with her own father. The fuck?! I'm not the only one who sees what's wrong with this whole thing, right? Koharu isn't anywhere near as bratty, but her problem is that in her focus episode, the whole conflict starts because she wandered away from her job and got lost...all because she let her imagination get away from her, like a toddler who saw a butterfly and wandered away from her parents. Seriously, Koharu is so annoyingly, cloyingly saccharine and sweet, her songs included, that she acts like a toddler who hasn't gotten over her Disney princess phase. She may as well have come straight out of the G3 My Little Pony Newborn Cuties specials. None of the other characters develop beyond their main archetype because the creators think having cute girls be moe is better than actually making them three-dimensional and relatable human beings.

The writing in and of itself also doesn't really make an effort to do the characters or the story justice, and often times, the show never seemed to know what it wanted to do with itself. In one episode, Momoka is called in to do a segment on bungee jumping, and everyone expects her to be scared when doing said bungee jumping, thinking that's her true self, but Momoka goes through with the bungee jump in her usual prim and proper manner...and for some reason, at the end, she goes on a diatribe about now realizing what love is. The hell?! Where did that come from?! It was completely out of nowhere, didn't fit with the rest of the episode, and I had to question just what the writers for that episode were even going for. There are also several conflicts that are unnecessarily dragged out to fill out the episode when they could have easily been resolved in five minutes if the characters just...y'know, talked things out. The show's attempts at writing drama come off as extremely shallow because it wants us to care about these kids, but what little they show of their backgrounds and motivations don't do anything to really make them anything more than, yet again, rote moe archetypes. Considering the anime juggles a large cast in 12 episodes, it doesn't have the wiggle room to really flesh out the characters as much as it could have if it had 24-26 episodes, like previous Idolmaster series had. Though...it kinda says a lot that my two favorite characters, and the ones who wound up having the best episodes, are Haru and Chie. And I gotta say, I am SO happy that Haru's episode didn't pull a 22/7 and force her to wear a skirt when she's stated she really doesn't like doing so and offered a solution that respected her autonomy. Seriously, if that episode tried to pull the whole "Tomboys have to wear skirts and be more feminine if they want to be accepted" moral, I would have thrown a shit-fit on the level of Soraya Montenegro.

I don't have as much to say about the soundtrack, as its your typical stock idol fare, with saccharine songs with shrill voices that have the same cookie-cutter lyrics. Honestly, the only characters whose insert songs didn't make me want to claw my ears out were Momoka, Chie, and Arisu. Even the background music was just completely unmemorable to me whatsoever. I mean, it's not like I could really pay attention to it over the girls' shrill, squeaky voices. The only thing about this anime I can really praise is the animation, as it's pretty good and fluid and whatever bad CGI models they use are used pretty sparingly. Though I honestly have to question why they'd use CGI models at all, as there are plenty of scenes with the girls dancing drawn in 2D, and those look way better than the 3D CGI dancing they use for some concert scenes. But the mostly good animation cannot save a terribly executed premise.

So I honestly have to ask...was this spin-off entirely necessary? What is it even supposed to accomplish? What's the point of making an anime about the youngest members of the franchise if you don't even give a damn about doing anything with it? A lot of the series is just the producer trying to find work for the girls, resulting in a lot of putzing around. Which makes me realize that U149 was basically made just to rake in more money for the franchise. Yes, I know U149 started off as a manga, but the manga itself is another facet of the multimedia franchise as a whole, and U149 is just a cynical corporate product meant to both garner more brand synergy and pander to people who want to see insufferable lolis. So yeah, Idolmaster U149 is insufferable, lazy, has no idea what it wants to do with itself, and thinks shilling cutesy-poo moe girls is a good replacement for actual substance. If you're into watching this kind of stuff, you do you, but if you can't stand watching little kids screaming about how awesome idols are and the overall saccharineness of trying to shill the idol industry as being nicer than it actually is, give it a miss. You're not missing much.

Huh, now this is a manga I didn't expect to find. I just randomly stumbled across Bones of an Invisible Human while scrolling through AniList and found that it had a complete English scanlation. I decided to sit down and read it, thinking I'd kill some time...and read the whole thing in almost one sitting. Not gonna lie, this is actually a surprisingly heartfelt manga that tackles the subject of child abuse and patricide with sensitivity and nuance. The story centers on a young girl named Aya Kinomiya, whose life isn't exactly the best. Her father rules the household with an iron fist and frequently ... hits her mother. At one point, Aya wishes she could just be invisible...and to her surprise, her wish is granted! Aya somehow gains the ability to turn invisible, and she wastes no time putting it to use. When she gets older, she does the unthinkable: While invisible, she stabs her father in the middle of the street, murdering him in retaliation for all that he put her family through. But the deed brings her no respite, and guilt weighs heavy on her as she starts high school, convinced that she has no right to live a normal life. She contemplates turning herself in, but when some new friends enter her life, she begins putting it off more and more...

If you're worried that the girls on the covers being nude means that there'll be scenes showing the underaged female main characters nude in this manga, don't worry. Other than the covers, which never go past the top of the girls' chests, there's no nudity, sexualization, or ecchi scenes in this manga. I read the whole thing and checked. Just wanted to throw that out there. Anyway, onto the review! For a story that starts out with a murder, Bones of an Invisible Human is surprisingly grounded in its narrative approach. A lot of the manga focuses on just Aya, the time she spends at school, and the friends she makes. This isn't a story where Aya uses her powers willy-nilly and does whatever the heck she wants. But I think the story's more grounded approach here works, because it spends a lot of time characterizing Aya, fleshing her out, and focusing on her life after she does the deed and how it affects her, allowing the audience to care about her and see her not simply a criminal, but a normal, desperate teenage girl who had to make hard choices with no right answer, who's been through things no child should ever have to go through. The drama is always quiet and never leans into emo territory.

Because of the author's choice to make the narrative more grounded and down-to-earth, Aya as a main character really carries the story on her back. Yes, she did something horrible out of desperation, with the story making it clear that her bad home life has resulted in her being constantly in survival mode. She's constantly grappling with conflicting desires or whether she even deserves happiness or normalcy in light of what she did. But the story has her slowly, gradually change over the course of the manga, and how experiencing a life with guilt constantly hanging over her like a shadow, alongside navigating it with the support of her new friends, helps her evolve and change her perspective, making her a much more complex character. My only complaint is that I wish the other characters, such as Aya's family and friends, had received this treatment as well. As much as I like Kana and Shiori and the roles they play in Aya's life, they don't really have much to them other than their primary character traits, and I would have liked to learn their backstories or why they turned out the way they did. Even Aya's family doesn't have much to them, especially her older brother, who doesn't even so much as talk until the penultimate chapter.

Going back to the manga's reliance on subtlety and grace over exaggerated melodrama, even the art reflects the series' grounded nature. The art itself has a slight ruggedness to it that sells the kind of story its telling, though the linework itself is sharp and clean, with a lot of hard contrast in the shading. The character designs are deliberately simple, leaning far more on the realistic side of things, though the mangaka makes up for this by having the characters be much more expressive in subtle things like eye movements and posture, using those to communicate the characters' emotions and show us what they're feeling. For example, when Aya is invited to a friend's house, she asks said friend if it's okay for them to play video games with the friend's dad, and her friend says yes. Aya has a blank, confused expression on her face, which shows that something completely ordinary to us speaks volumes of what she was made to experience at the hands of her own father. I will say, Jun Ogino is a master at showing over telling, along with using panels that have no dialogue at all to great effect. Since the manga is only four volumes long, it's a breeze to read through, with the steady, deliberate pacing moving the story forward without rushing things.

One thing I'm sure that some readers will take issue with is the ending, where it stops right before a certain event that Aya talks about. Some may call it inconclusive, and it doesn't show what happens next. I personally had no problem with it because with how short Bones of an Invisible Human is, I didn't think that event would be the focus, and it's clear the manga is much more about Aya's arc than having a conclusive ending. To quote another review, the manga feels less like a fireworks show and more like a cold, winter night, even down to the ending, and considering the nature of the story, I think that's fitting. Some time ago, I read another manga about a girl contemplating killing her abusive father called May My Father Die Soon, only it doesn't have supernatural powers and the MC is both physically and sexually abused by her father. That manga doesn't have a full English scanlation yet, and from what I've read, while I respect what its trying to do, parts of it come off as pretty tasteless because of the fetishy, almost Male Gaze-y way the mangaka chose to draw the scenes where the MC is sexually abused by her father. Between that and Bones of an Invisible Human, I find I like Bones a little better by virtue of the fact that it treats the subjects of dometic and child abuse with more tact and sensitivity without the tasteless elements that May My Father Die Soon has.

Bones of an Invisible Human is a quiet, poignant, and surprisingly wholesome manga about a girl coming to terms with the decision she made and how it affects her life afterward. While it has its issues, I still found it an intriguing, thought provoking read, and I recommend it for those who like their crime stories to be more grounded and tackle sensitive issues with sensitivity and grace.

(4/24/2023: I decided to completely rewrite my old review, as it's not up to par with my current reviews and is embarrassingly overly fangirly. For some reason MAL wouldn't let me just replace the old one with new content, so I had to delete my old review)

The year was 2007. It was around that time that I was really starting to dip my toes deeper into the anime fandom beyond just Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or whatever was airing on TV. I was browsing some anime websites, and a promo picture for a new anime called Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette caught my eye. It looked interesting ... and I wanted to watch it...but at the time, little to no fansubs for it existed, and the few people that saw the anime hated it, dismissing it as a watered down version of the original novel right out of the gate. Back then, I wasn't familiar with the original Victor Hugo novel Les Miserables, but I watched the few episodes that received subs and I liked it a lot. But Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette wouldn't receive completed fansubs until 2011 (Thanks, Licca Fansubs!!), around the time I started college. During that time, I learned that Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette was actually made as an attempt to revive the World Masterpiece Theater franchise, which was notable for adapting Western children's novels into Japanese animation, from the early 70s up to 1997, then from 2007-2009. Unfortunately, the attempt to revive WMT failed, and since Konnichiwa Anne ended, no new WMT anime have been made. Which is a damn shame in my opinion, because as of this writing, I've seen a good majority of the WMT, this anime included. While I do consider Dog of Flanders to be better, I'm thankful that I got to watch Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette, because it introduced me to the WMT as a whole and was one of the anime that helped refine my personal tastes. And because, honestly? Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette is pretty damn amazing. I did review this when the fansubs finished, but looking back, my old review for it is pretty overly fangirly and not up to standard with how my reviews are now, so I'm writing a new one.

While the marketing does place quite a bit of focus on Cosette, and a majority of the series is told from her point of view, the anime does follow the same story beats as the book. Set in nineteenth century-era France, the series begins with Cosette, a three-year-old girl, traveling with her mother Fantine, who is trying to find a job and a place to live, but have always been shunned away due to few employers hiring single mothers. When her mother is promised with the prosperity of working in the big city, Cosette is separated from her in the hopes a caretaker named Thénardier will watch over her while her mother earns some money. Unfortunately, this was a trick and the caretaker is a corrupt man who makes Cosette his slave, and she is subject to their abuse every day. The city Fantine works at is famous for its kindly mayor, Monsieur Madeleine, but what nobody knows is that his real name is Jean Valjean, a former convict who served 19 years in prison, only changing his ways after a bishop is kind to him. When circumstances put Fantine in dire straits, Jean Valjean promises to save Cosette from the Thenardiers so she can have a life. But Valjean is being pursued by the stoic, determined Inspector Javert, a member of the Paris police force who steadfastly holds the "once a criminal, always a criminal" mindset and wants to throw Valjean back into prison by any means necessary.

Now, if you're thinking Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette is a dumbed down, heavily sanitized, kiddyfied version of the novel akin to G3 My Little Pony, you'd best throw that expectation out the window, because other than removing the heavier stuff such as Fantine going into prostitution and Javert's suicide (Which I'm pretty sure is because Japan considers it taboo to depict suicide in children's programming), the anime is actually pretty faithful to the book. Probably more so than other adaptations I know of, such as the 1935 and 1998 movies. Several important characters do die in the later half of the anime, and very few get spared. It pulls no punches in its depiction of the June Rebellion arc or the abuse various characters are made to endure. Plus, several characters who don't get a lot of development in the book or whose fates were left ambiguous are not only more fleshed out here, but even receive happier outcomes. To be honest, I'm kind of glad the anime decided to try and be both fairly light and dark, because leaning too much into the darker elements of the book might have made it come across as too edgy. Plus, just because the anime adds a lot more happier moments, including making the ending more hopeful than the book was, that doesn't necessarily mean none of them were poorly written or felt unearned, because in my opinion, I think they work wonderfully within the context of the anime as a whole.

From a technical standpoint, the animation is really good. Not just in terms of its overall presentation, but because of just how different it looks compared to WMT's previous output. Because it was made in the middle of the digital era, Nippon Animation was able to do more with the character designs, backgrounds, and settings that it couldn't back when they were still active. Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette has a much glossier, more refined look about it compared to previous shows' more rustic, rougher outputs, though that's not to say their older shows weren't good. The designs of female characters such as Cosette, Fantine, Eponine, and so on do look a bit more reminiscent of modern anime girls, with big eyes and glossy hair, but like with all of WMT shows before it, there's zero cartoony exaggeration. No chibi faces, no veins popping outside their heads, etc, which is a rule the WMT has always followed for all their shows. The male characters also manage to toe the line between being cartoony and realistic, with more emphasis on the latter without clashing with the show's tone. The actual character motion ranges from being slow to fluid depending on the scene, and it's always remained consistent throughout. The backgrounds are detailed and nicely rendered, and Nippon's depiction of France in the early 19th century is pretty spot-on from what I can see. Admittedly, I don't have as much to say about the soundtrack, as again, it's been years since I've seen the Les Mis anime, but I remember liking it, and both theme songs by Yuki Saitou are beautifully sung and fit the feel of the show perfectly.

If there's one thing the WMT is really good at across most, if not all their series, it's fleshing out their characters and making them as interesting and three-dimensional as humanly possible, and Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette is no different. The reason this is so is because the WMT series in general puts a lot of emphasis on build-up, which since most WMT series have 40-50 episodes, they're actually allowed to do more than what 13-26 episode series allow them to do, and actually having it pay off. A lot of said build-up in here consists of the creators fleshing out the characters, bringing the best out of them, and moving the story forward. Every single character, from Cosette, Jean Valjean, Marius, Eponine, Gavroche, and even all the men in the Les Amis, is well developed, interesting, and three-dimensional, each with their own roles to play in the grand epic that is Les Miserables. For anybody who felt that Eponine didn't have much in the way of screen time in the book or in the various other adaptations, don't worry, she gets a lot to do here, both as a kid and as an adult. Basically, Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette has an awesome cast of characters that are portrayed extremely well here, differences from the book notwithstanding, and even with the anime's lighter, more kid-friendly tone, they still retain the depth and nuances they had from the book.

I personally didn't have much in the way of complaints about the anime myself, though this is because I haven't read the book yet. I know a lot of people will take issue with the anime removing the heavier elements of the book, like Fantine going into prostitution and Javert's suicide, which is valid, and there are no shortage of adaptations that retain those two things. But I don't think those are reason enough to completely dismiss the anime as a whole. Plus, the first 13 or so episodes can be a bit of a climb, as they focus a lot on Cosette living with the Thenardiers, and it's fairly slow paced, even though I think both are done really well considering how long the anime actually is (52 episodes). If you can get past the slow pacing and the removal of the heavier, darker parts, Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette is an excellently written series from beginning to end, and now that the series has complete English fansubs, it's a lot easier to watch and access! There are also two manga adaptations of Les Miserables, both of which are more faithful to the book's tone and keep the parts that the anime removed: The 2011 manga by Takahiro Arai, which Seven Seas is releasing in the US right now, and the 2015 manga by Udon Entertainment, and while the latter is shorter than the former, I think both manga are awesome recreations of the epic that is Les Miserables, even if Arai's version has the benefit of being much longer, and therefore able to cover the entire story. Say what you will about Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette being happier and lighter than the source material, IMHO it's a way better adaptation than the 2012 musical movie ever was, mainly for the fact that it DOESN'T have useless, unnecessarily gross scenes like Thenardier urinating in a guy's beer cup and a random inn patron having sex with Santa Claus that were clearly thrown in there just for pointless shock humor! Seriously, whoever decided filming those scenes for the 2012 movie should never work in the film industry ever again!!

So yeah, I love Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette. I have a strong attachment to this anime, and it's one of my favorite series of all time. It has great characters, a realistic yet exciting storyline that never goes over-the-top, and it is an utter shame that the WMT revival never got off the ground, because we need more anime like this that actually care about telling interesting stories and characters you can relate to. This anime also helped me discover a blog that to this day I still visit, and said blog introduced me to a lot more anime I would come to love later in love, so I owe Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette that much. So don't be put off by the anime's lighter tone, because if you want to watch something that's not only full of passion, full of evolving characters and a story that has a lot of care put into it, give Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette a shot. I did and I don't regret it.

Animation has always been, and always will be, a versatile medium. From its initial inception in the late 19th century to now, animation all across the world tackled all sorts of stories and subject matter, and is capable of feats that live-action media can't replicate. Unfortunately, a good majority of people wrongly dismiss animation as just babysitting fodder for children, refusing to believe that it can be used to tell all kinds of stories. While that mindset is slowly going away, it's still around, and considering all the sad news about certain companies not only outright cancelling a crap ton of cartoons, but refusing to ... compensate animators for all their hard work and pretty much throwing them under the bus, it's probably not going to go away any time soon. Looking at you, David Zaslav and Warner Brothers. Luckily, Japan got the message pretty early on, and from the seventies onward, it treated animation as a medium just as capable of creative storytelling as anything else. That's not to say other countries don't do the same, but that's beyond the scope of this review. Plus, even as some people still treat animation as little more than children's fare or Family Guy knock-offs, there are still plenty of stuff made by people who love and revere animation as an art form, with the subject of today's review, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, being very much a love letter to animation as a whole.

When Midori Asakusa was young, she became fascinated not just with animation, but how its made. When she enters high school alongside her cynical, money-grubbing friend Sayaka Kanamori, she dreams of creating an anime set in the weirdly constructed campus of her high school. But she's not exactly good at talking to people and is rather shy by nature, so she hasn't been able to take that first step. While attending a screening at their school's anime club, they encounter Tsubame Mizusaki, a rich and famous model who also happens to be a classmate of theirs. Upon learning that Mizusaki also wants to become an animator, the three of them become fast friends, with Mizusaki and Asakusa finding common ground in their shared interest, though Kanamori mainly sees encouraging their interest as a way to make some cash. Together, this eclectic trio intend on creating an animation club so they can bring their creations into reality.

I initially passed over Eizouken when it first came out, because at the time, I was still deep into my anime burnout, and didn't claw myself out of it until COVID hit. It's only now, three years after it first aired, that I finally decided to sit down and watch it, especially now that Sentai Filmworks FINALLY has a release date set for their blu-ray set for the series this year. For the sake of brevity, I'm just gonna keep referring to the series as just Eizouken. For an anime that's entirely about the medium of animation, whoever decided to have Masaaki Yuasa and his company Science Saru produce the anime for Eizouken deserves a medal, because it's made clear from the very first frame that Yuasa and Science Saru understood the assignment they were given. The character designs are all unique, looking nothing like your typical anime character designs, but are expressive and lively, with Yuasa's team bringing them to life with his signature style of movement exaggeration. The backgrounds are given just as much attention, with the show taking place in a bizarre cityscape that actually has a pretty rich history and feels like a character in and of itself, from the sci-fi-esque architecture to the little nooks and crannies Asakusa and friends find whenever they're out and about. One thing to note about Eizouken as a series is that there are segments that take place in Asakusa and Mizusaki's imaginations, showing how immersed they are when they start thinking about how to animate things, contemplating story ideas, or explaining sci-fi concepts. These fantasy segments are animated with watercolor backgrounds, rough linework, and intentionally messy renders, reminiscent of storyboards and indicative of the creative process, which I think was a stroke of genius on the animation team's part. The usage of all these different animation styles, even the outline-less pastels in the short films the club creates, really highlight the medium's overall versatility, which makes sense since Eizouken is about showing off how great the medium can be.

The soundtrack I'm admittedly a bit more mixed on. It's not bad or anything, and the techno sounds that are present throughout the OST are used pretty effectively. The songs are well sung, too. I'm just not really a fan of heavy usage of techno in general, and there were some noises in Eizouken's OST that really hurt my ears, like the weird dial-up-esque beeping noise that appears whenever the girls get lost in their imaginations. I guess it's more a matter of personal taste for me. It's definitely not a bad soundtrack though, don't get me wrong. I will say that the sound design is very unique, not just in the regular things, like the usual sound effects. Did you know that some of the sound effects, particularly the ones that appear when Asakusa and Mizusaki get lost in their imaginations, were done by the voice actors themselves? To quote another reviewer, from the pat pat pat of propeller blades to the ch ch ch of a train on the tracks, even the whoosh of wind rushing through the air, is done by the leads VA’s. It’s incredibly charming, fits the scenes perfectly, and lends itself well to Eizouken’s “homemade” aesthetic.

The characters themselves are also a huge highlight for Eizouken as a whole. The main trio in particular all have the right balance of personality, quirks, strengths, and flaws that actually make them feel like three-dimensional people rather than just generic cutesy anime stereotypes. Everything from the way they carry themselves to even the quirks in their speech really bring them to life in the best way possible. I could really relate to Asakusa in particular, being shy around people and passionate about her interests. While they don't always change over the course of the story (With Kanamori being the biggest example of this), the way the anime gradually shows us what they're like and what drives them to do what they do manage to do an amazing job at changing the viewer's perspective on them. I love all these dumb kids. I kinda wish some of the side characters like Doumeki and Sowande could have gotten more screentime, though. That being said, my only other complaint about Eizouken is the character of Kanamori. Don't get me wrong, she's a perfectly fine character who bounces off Asakusa and Mizusaki amazingly, and her interactions with the rest of the characters are fun to watch. My problem with Kanamori isn't her penny-pinching ways or the fact that she sometimes goes too far in her criticism of Asakusa and Mizusaki sometimes. My issue with her is that she's somehow able to pull off all sorts of amazing feats and get connections with powerful people that no middle schooler should be able to, and the fact that she manages to pull it all off to solve whatever problem is in front of the club kind of makes her feel less like a character and more like a walking talking get-out-of-jail-free plot device or a force of nature that pulls solutions out of her butt whenever its convenient. Seriously, what kid her age is able to somehow garner a crap ton of media coverage around a short cartoon film and get said media coverage to turn out positive?

In terms of story, I've heard people compare Eizouken to Ed, Edd n Eddy, and I can absolutely see the similarities, as both are shows about three kids hanging around town and getting into adventures. But Eizouken is more structured, has an actual plot, and isn't anywhere near as mean-spirited as the later seasons of Ed, Edd n Eddy got. Eizouken's story in general isn't very complex, as it focuses solely on our main trio trying to make an anime and showing the work they put in to make it happen, exploring the realities of running a studio and making compromises in order to make your vision come into shape. But the strength of the characters and their colorful personalities give more meat to what would be a fairly rote story, and its unabashed celebration of the medium shines through in every frame, elevating Eizouken into something special. Bottom line, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is a fun, energetic series that absolutely oozes with love for not only its source material, but for the medium of animation as a whole, and you absolutely should not miss out on it. Now if only certain people would acknowledge that animation is just as valid a medium as live-action movies and TV and not screw over the people who work on it. AGAIN, LOOKING AT YOU DAVID ZASLAV!!

When you hear the words The Little Mermaid, what comes to mind? You're probably thinking of Disney's 1989 animated movie, which is understandable since that's considered the most well known adaptation of the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. The Little Mermaid is one of the most famous fairy tales in existence, and whether you really know about the story or not, you're very likely to have at least heard of it in some capacity, whether through the Disney movie, reading some illustrated version of the book somebody put out, or other means. But what many don't know is that the Disney movie isn't the ... only movie adaptation of the story, as there have been others that have tackled it before and since then, with one of them being an anime movie that Toei made in 1975, referred to as Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. For the sake of brevity I'm just gonna keep calling it The Little Mermaid. If you're thinking that this version is gonna be anything like the Disney movie, you're out of luck, as one thing this version has over the Disney version is that it remains true to the story's original tragic ending.

You won't find Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian in this adaptation of The Little Mermaid. This one stars a blonde mermaid princess named Marina, who along with her dolphin friend Fritz, really wants to see the world beyond the water, as her older sisters are always telling her stories about it. But against her father's wishes, she and Fritz manage to ascend to the surface, where they find a ship in the middle of a bad storm. Marina manages to save one of the passengers, who turns out to be a prince named Fjord, but is made to flee before she can talk to him so she won't get caught by onlookers. Yearning to see him again, Marina decides to visit the Sea Witch and ask her for a way to live as a human. The Sea Witch gives her a potion that can turn her tail into human legs, but at the cost of her voice and can never become a mermaid again. Not only that, if the prince marries another girl, Marina will dissolve into sea foam and die. Marina manages to reunite with Fjord, but things don't exactly work out in Marina's favor.

Honestly, there's really no point in not mentioning that Marina dies in the end, as this movie makes no secret of the fact that it's more faithful to Andersen's original story, even down to the tragic ending. Hell, even Discotek's now out-of-print DVD release doesn't attempt to hide it! The fact that the mermaid dies in the end has been referenced in pretty much any media that makes homages to the story, even stuff like Puella Magi Madoka Magica. One other thing that differentiates this version from the Disney film is that the mermaids...don't wear bikinis. Yeah, the mermaids' chests are exposed, complete with uncensored though distant shots of their nipples, though their long hair covers them on occasion. It's not to the level of hentai or anything, but I can easily picture some parents finding this inappropriate to show their kids. Then again, the company that first dubbed this edited some shots, but even that wasn't enough.

From an animation standpoint, it's fairly obvious that this adaptation doesn't have anything close to the budget the Disney version had. This was a Toei movie made in 1975 after all, and it was made around the time Toei began making cheaper movies to rake in money easier. The character designs are rougher and more rustic and the actual motion can be a little stilted barring certain scenes. But that doesn't necessarily mean The Little Mermaid's animation is bad, per se, and it does have its own charm that also sets it apart from the Disney version. And that's also not to say that the animation can't be creative in its own right, because the waterlife have great designs and the hand-painted backgrounds are well made and do a masterful job at giving this particular movie a more cutthroat atmosphere to it. Oh, and the Sea Witch's design is great, too. Sure, she's no Ursula, but she doesn't need to be.

Speaking of the characters, the closest thing this movie has to a Flounder analogue is the dolphin named Fritz, who is Marina's friend, though Fritz technically came before Flounder's conception. I haven't seen the Disney movie in a while so I have no memories of Flounder or his personality, but I found Fritz to be fairly entertaining and fun, both as comic relief and as Marina's ally. Plus, Fritz is shown to be surprisingly badass for a character of his caliber. He gets to do a lot in this movie, from managing to fight off bad monsters to help Marina when she needs him. The other characters...they're admittedly kind of one-note, but they serve their roles well, even if they're not as active as the characters in Disney's adaptation. The only character I don't get is this cat named Gemmy, who for some reason conspires to kill Marina, and why they want to do so is never explained. Also, for some reason Gemmy is able to talk with humans and again, the movie never bothers to explain why. What even was the point of this character? Plus, Marina spends a good portion of her time as a damsel in distress and not really doing much. Again, I haven't seen Disney's The Little Mermaid in years, so I have very few memories of Ariel as a character, other than that Ariel is more headstrong and rebellious, so other than those qualities, I can't really comment on Marina as a character, as it's kind of pointless to compare her to Ariel.

And I will admit, there is one other thing that keeps me from loving the movie as a whole: The extremely rough voice acting. I'm not talking about the English dub which, while definitely a product of its time, is actually pretty good. I'm talking about the original Japanese voice acting. What do I mean? Their overall acting is fine, but several of the characters' voices either sound way too deep or way too shrill. Marina's voice is said to be beautiful and angelic, but Fumie Kashiyama's voice for her makes her sound really deep in a way that doesn't match Marina's design. On the other hand, Fritz's Japanese voice seems to be set to permanent loud, nasally shrill every time he talks. It's not the most annoying voice I've heard (Looking at you Misaki Kuno, Nichika Omori, Takeshi Kusao as Coco, and Eimi Naruse), but if you have sensitive hearing and can't stand certain noises, it'll get real grating real fast. It says a lot that I prefer the English dub voices over the Japanese voices by virtue of the fact that Marina and Fritz have voices that actually match their appearances and personalities and don't grate on my ears. But it's been a while since I've seen the dub, so for all I know, my opinion might change if I watch it again.

But I don't want to end this review on a negative note, so I will finish this off with one other thing that I did like about this adaptation: The soundtrack. It has plenty of harps, pianos, and wind instruments giving it all a slow, pleasant atmosphere, and the songs sung by the late great Kumiko Oosugi are given the right amount of wonder and whimsy. Now, this would be the part where I'd mention that The Little Mermaid is now available on DVD, and for a while, it was. Discotek Media put it out in 2015, but unfortunately, that release fell out of print. You can rent or buy the dubbed version off Amazon Prime if you have an account, but that's it as far as accessibility goes. I'm lucky I managed to buy my DVD copy when I did. Overall, Toei's adaptation of The Little Mermaid doesn't entirely hold up well under modern scrutiny, and some baffling narrative decisions and uncensored nudity make it hard to recommend to a casual view, but this is one of the more faithful versions of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, so if you're tired of Ariel, feel free to check this one out.